Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[CrashToDesktop]

Oh, I forgot to mention in my little amendment to Megas' idea - Hull will still take damage as normal.  Hitting weapons and engines (and dealing damage) will reduce CR independently of the ship's remaining hull strength.  The idea I loved was switching from an abstract number for weapons, engines, and crew to the CR of the ship.

@Thaago
Seems like a pretty good idea for the vanilla game as it is, although I still like my idea more (as it's creator, hehe).  Although this idea would require that ships become insanely rare and expensive to actually become worth-while to do, considering the costs and time involved (in SS+ with the hardest settings, this would actually be pretty balanced and fun).  I choose not to include that in the OP for those reasons.  Also, when a ship goes thermo-nuclear, I highly doubt there's going to be much of the wiring or controls left on it that still function, especially on the inside, so recovery of those is pretty slim, if at all.  The idea also uses credits as a basis of balance - you can always get more credits, it's not much of a limiting factor.  You could almost grow your fleet exponentially with every battle.

I agree that this takes RNG out of the equation completely (aside from nuking a hulk by accident), which is nice.  However, I think this might give the player too much free-reign over gaining ships - even having the possibility of recovering every one of your enemy's ships is pretty extreme.  Time is the limiting factor in the OP - you literally cannot tickle every ship to combat-ineffectiveness without your AI ships destroying the rest of the fleet before you've made many ships combat-ineffective.  In smaller battles this is possible (it's been built for that), but reduces in effectiveness as your fleet grows.  Always take into account what Megas might do, every possible exploit and hint (he's good at that kind of stuff) - rolling fleets only makes getting more ships easier.

[Thaago]

Well, if you can always get more credits, then the game is already broken. The current endgame infinite credits MUST get fixed, so lets assume that it does.

I like letting players get ships, IF they are willing to pay the high costs. If they are rare, powerful ships, then the player has to kill them first. Through an enemy officer most likely. So let them! Although I do agree that mods will want a flag or hullmod that removes that for bosses etc.

Ships exploding is fun. Getting rare ships after killing them is fun. High credit costs can balance said fun to make it an interesting choice.

[CrashToDesktop]

Well, if you can always get more credits, then the game is already broken. The current endgame infinite credits MUST get fixed, so lets assume that it does.

With that in mind, then yes, your idea is a fair one.

[Megas]

Right now, player almost needs near-infinite credits to clean out shipyards so that markets produce more ships next month, hopefully a shiny new Hyperion or other rare ship instead of yet another junk Hammerhead.

More expensive yet reliable boarding would ease the need to "gamble" (Diablo-style) for ships.

Even better would be the ability to acquire blueprints and autofactories so that I do not need to rely on another faction's market to get what I want.  (I really want to produce all of my stuff so I can destroy everyone, Nexerelin style.  No more playing paperboy at endgame!)

[nomadic_leader]

People we really gotta put our long posts in outline form if anyone is going to read them.

Basically the OP just seems like a bunch of under the hood complexity that doesn't change or address the gameplay issues as the player experiences them. See my award winning thread that people keep necroing: http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=9421.0

One problem with the OP:
-You get all your disabled ships back at the end of the battle? So every battle is all or nothing. Boring.

Here are the problems with current mechanic that need to be addressed:
-The boarding dialog is boring and overcomplicated vs result
-Not getting to choose the ship you board is lame
-Only getting to board one ship is lame.
-But having to go through that boring dialog for multiple ships would be even more boring.
-In a game about fleet battles forcing the player through a separate dialog for every salvage is dubious


What it needs to be, somehow:
-Boarding in combat interface by a command given to the AI ec
-Progress bar instead of some boring dialog.
-or one dialog that has every ship after battle, something like the loot dialog, and you make the choice for how to deal with each in only 1-2 clicks
-Simple, player visible capture odds based on crew complements + any special modifiers

Really that is all there is to it. Disabled vs combat ineffective vs 2 out of 3 vs whatever other additional rigamarole you add to an already tedious dialog window just aren't going to cut it.

[Chronosfear]

At first I thought : Meh ..
But after a day i began to like the idea a lot.
Though towing hulls with you sounds a bit weird.
The difference between a fast search : only obvious loot taken which can be unloaded and loaded quickly
and a deeper time taking search, with more loot ( enough time to eg. dismount weapons ) sounds nice.

Also the proper tactic based on the damage of the enemy ship would be good and the outcome much more predictable which is pretty much needed.

I support this!

[nomadic_leader]

Another reason for in-combat boarding. Combat in SS, which is a tactical game, is broken since there is only one tactical problem in the game's combat at all. (aside from beacons that don't belong or make sense within the gameworld, and are random and meaningless) How can a tactical space game have only 1 kind of battle anyway?

Only goal in every SS battle:
-Kill enemies.


If we had in combat boarding
-Kill enemies
-Capture the enemy paragon
-Deploy a fragile troop ship to capture paragon
-Keep troop ship safe until paragon is disabled
-Order troop ship to board the paragon
-Keep troop ship safe while it boards paragon via progress bar
-Make sure the paragon limps away safely

Tell me, which is more interesting? Which involves actual tactics?

[CrashToDesktop]

Not too much of a fan of boarding in-combat.  Which is why I didn't include any of that in my suggestion.  Two completely different ways of capturing ships - not really comparable.

And no, you don't get all your disabled ships at the end of the battle.  If the ship was made combat-ineffective and you won the battle, then you will get back those ships.  If you lost, then the enemy has a chance to board your combat-ineffective ships.  Also, mind you that the AI isn't always gunning to make a ship combat-ineffective - they just follow their normal shoot-stuff-until-it-dies.  It'll be by sheer chance if they happen to make a ship combat-ineffective - most of the time, they'll just destroy the targeted ship (and when I say destroy, I mean "disabled", where the hulk is still there - it's just more logical to say since it blows up visually.

[Tartiflette]

If we had in combat boarding
-Kill enemies
-Capture the enemy paragon
-Deploy a fragile troop ship to capture paragon
-Keep troop ship safe until paragon is disabled
-Order troop ship to board the paragon
-Keep troop ship safe while it boards paragon via progress bar
-Make sure the paragon limps away safely

Reasons to rage-quit or reload with in-combat boarding:
-Flagship destroyed trying to protect boarding fragile troop ship that can't move.
-fragile troop ship got shot down by a flamed out missile.
-fragile troop ship got shot down by a stray shot.
-fragile troop ship collided with the hulk of the Paragon after it was moved and was destroyed.
-fragile troop ship could simply wait for the battle to end before safely board.

[nomadic_leader]

Reasons to rage-quit or reload with in-combat boarding:
-Flagship destroyed trying to protect boarding fragile troop ship that can't move.
-fragile troop ship got shot down by a flamed out missile.
-fragile troop ship got shot down by a stray shot.
-fragile troop ship collided with the hulk of the Paragon after it was moved and was destroyed.
-fragile troop ship could simply wait for the battle to end before safely board.

I can recommend a good fruit slicing game for android if you'd like something simpler But to me those things sound like interesting examples of tactical jeopardy and challenge that you'd normally expect in a fleet tactics game.

Reason to detachedly-quit starsector altogether:
-All. combat. is. always. the. same.

And no, you don't get all your disabled ships at the end of the battle.  If the ship was made combat-ineffective and you won the battle, then you will get back those ships.

Ok right, if you retreat then you'll lose those ships. But realistically how often do you all ever retreat once you've gotten a decent sized fleet?  For anything but campaign start phase, it's all or nothing. (not to mention that there are even people who restart if they lose a single ship from their fleet)

[Tartiflette]

To expand on in-combat boarding: I'm not hostile to the idea, just NOT with a "fragile troop ship" because it makes absolutely no sense. Duh, lets bring a school-bus into a warzone to take a heavily defended bunker...

Bringing a heavily armored capital-ship along-side another and sending troops via suicide pods (ala Spaz, since that game may be flawed but I find its crew mechanics extremely interesting) does make more sense however. Those pod launchers would take a large weapon slot however, so spamming them means loosing a lot of firepower, and use marines from your cargo as ammo...

[Gothars]

at least we know what doesn't work: RNG through dialog menus. Or RNG at all. Death to RNG!

You know, I really have to disagree. The current system could work well, it just needs more choices and more feedback. The potential to "do well".
For example:
Your marines encounter a pocket of heavy resistance at the engine room, do you want to:
- Fire ship weapons at the approximate location of the enemy troops (chance of unusable ship up)
- Send a ship with additional marines (CR cost up)
- Order to charge at all costs (marine casualties up)
- Retreat

Now the encounter is close to the engine room, so ship weapon fire could even further increase the chance of destruction of the ship, which you have to consider. Maybe the total HP of the wreck are important here, too.

All kinds of scenarios are thinkable: reactivating weapon turrets that threaten your ships, engine reactivation, hostage situations, giving up on the ship to capture an enemy officer...

The idea is that you can have many different outcomes, but no extreme outcome should come unexpectedly, only because you pushed your luck (to safe resources) despite ample warning.

[Serenitis]

Here are the problems with current mechanic that need to be addressed:
-The boarding dialog is boring and overcomplicated vs result
-Not getting to choose the ship you board is lame
-Only getting to board one ship is lame.
-But having to go through that boring dialog for multiple ships would be even more boring.
-In a game about fleet battles forcing the player through a separate dialog for every salvage is dubious

I'd just like to chip in with some thought re: your thoughts.

I've never had a problem with the after-action boarding dialog. It serves the purpose perfectly and I feel replacing it with some thrice damned mini game (or some other such thing) would be not only a ton of work, but pretty horrible to actually play. Especially repeatedly.
Sometimes the simple things work the best, and I personally think the minimalist approach we currently have works very well.

However....
Being limited to only a single capture and not being able to choose which ship to board are limitations which make the whole experience quite frustrating. Coupled with the really quite poor rate of success for such activities creates a "perfect storm" of negativity which actively encourages you to not use the feature at all.
SS+ has shown us it is quite possible to string together multiple boarding attempts and make some degree of success not quite so elusive. Still no choice of boarding target, but it's still overall a much more positive experience.
Also, going through multiple boarding dialogs is effortless and takes all of seconds. It is not at all an onerous task.

Would some kind of "boarding in battle" mechanic be fun? Yes, it very probably would be. (It is in Distant Worlds for example.) But how do you accomplish this?
If you're boarding an enemy ship and fail does it explode? Does it carry on attacking you? Does it run away?
What if you succeed? Does the ship just sit there? Does it somehow get converted to your side right there and start fighting it's former comrades? And if so, how do you go about achieving that?
It a lot of work, and for something that doesn't really add anything to the game that isn't already achieved by a simple text dialog which flat out bypasses all those problems.
Dubious? I don't think it is at all. More like a realistic assesment of what is worth spending effort on.

I'm not trying to harsh on you or anything, I would love it if the B-in-B mechanic was a thing. It would mean I could could make the mod I want to make but currently can't because it needs to revolve entirely around it.
But it's something the game just doesn't need.
Maybe sometime in the future though. Maybe....

[CrashToDesktop]

at least we know what doesn't work: RNG through dialog menus. Or RNG at all. Death to RNG!

Eh....removing all RNG turns a game into a numbers game.  Meaning you can predict the outcome of something far before it actually happens - not very good game design.  There always has to be some uncertainty.

Ok right, if you retreat then you'll lose those ships. But realistically how often do you all ever retreat once you've gotten a decent sized fleet?  For anything but campaign start phase, it's all or nothing. (not to mention that there are even people who restart if they lose a single ship from their fleet)

I explicitly mentioned that the AI doesn't gun for combat-ineffectiveness in the post you quoted that from. -_- They don't aim for weapons or engines - so more often than not, ships will be destroyed.  Most of the combat-ineffective ships will happen from player control.  Oh, and your thread isn't exactly award-winning because it's been nercro'd - the last few necros have been talking about stuff not relating to the OP (talking about scuttling).

And speaking of your complexity under the hood - according to that little list you drew up comparing SS to your boarding, the complexity is through the roof.  So...yea.

[Thaago]

at least we know what doesn't work: RNG through dialog menus. Or RNG at all. Death to RNG!

Eh....removing all RNG turns a game into a numbers game.  Meaning you can predict the outcome of something far before it actually happens - not very good game design.  There always has to be some uncertainty.

You don't need uncertainty for good game design. Pretty much every strategy game relies on low uncertainty, but complex outcomes, in order to make good games. Each player is trying to predict the outcome better than the other. Now I know SS isn't a strategy game, but its mantra of "Meaningful player choices" is a doctrine of strategy games. Lots of strategy games have random elements, but they tend to be small and frequent; this means that in order to be optimal a player must deal with those random elements, but in the end it is still the player choices that make the difference.

SS combat works the same way; there is plenty of RNG in the base game that works well, because it is "under the hood" and what we see are dynamics based on it. For example, the combat AI does its evaluations after intervals that have randomly determined times - this simulates reaction time and also makes sure that ships respond differently. But when the player hits 'left' on the keyboard, the ship goes left. It doesn't have a 80% chance of going left.

At present, boarding in SS is a strategy decision. Adding a ship to the fleet is a really big thing and there is already a lot of uncertainty associated with it: will I find the weapons to equip it? Will I be able to support it or will it cost too much? Will burn speed changes make me not be able to catch prey? The big one: will the cost of getting this thing captured and running be worth it?

So after the player has thought about those things (or not, to their peril - adding a ship can really screw the player over with the current supply/credit dynamic early game, which I think is great) the fact that the boarding is then a X% to board is effectively the game going "You have X% chance for your choice to have meaning."

It is the equivalent of, in combat: The player makes the choice to dodge some missiles by going left, even though they know that this brings them closer to an enemy cruiser that might pound them. Oh wait, pressing left only has 80% chance to work, so even though the player made the choice, they don't get to follow through with it.

I think that giving the player the chance to salvage every ship by towing its hulk back, at high cost, is enough of a strategic choice that it is good gameplay. Also, its fun! Who wants to hunt down and destroy a Paragon only to not get it?

at least we know what doesn't work: RNG through dialog menus. Or RNG at all. Death to RNG!

You know, I really have to disagree. The current system could work well, it just needs more choices and more feedback. The potential to "do well".
For example:
Your marines encounter a pocket of heavy resistance at the engine room, do you want to:
- Fire ship weapons at the approximate location of the enemy troops (chance of unusable ship up)
- Send a ship with additional marines (CR cost up)
- Order to charge at all costs (marine casualties up)
- Retreat

Now the encounter is close to the engine room, so ship weapon fire could even further increase the chance of destruction of the ship, which you have to consider. Maybe the total HP of the wreck are important here, too.

All kinds of scenarios are thinkable: reactivating weapon turrets that threaten your ships, engine reactivation, hostage situations, giving up on the ship to capture an enemy officer...

The idea is that you can have many different outcomes, but no extreme outcome should come unexpectedly, only because you pushed your luck (to safe resources) despite ample warning.

I think this would be nice, but only if there were NOT a single X% chance to board at the end. Have each decision that the player makes update a progress towards either capturing the ship or blowing it up (and NO unusable). If at some point both progress bars are high, then the choice whether to retreat or not becomes meaningful.

But at that point its a minigame, and if the history of video games has taught me anything its that mini games are usually terrible. The player figures them out and at that point its just tedium (I'm looking at you, every single minigame in ME2). And once the player has decided on some optimal sequence, then the whole thing boils down to X% to board, only this time with delays.